Quote:
Originally Posted by Ice
Just curious, what's the criteria for a car to graduate to status symbol. Because I see BMW's singled out a lot, but never the same judgment on Volvo's, Lexus, Infiniti, etc. Is it money? Is it that the BMW is so beautiful? What is it exactly?
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They are a status symbol because their upfront cost and maintenance costs are high and out of reach for most people. A modest car that still has performance credibility is say a 3.5 litre Nissan Maxima. Many wealthy people, particularly small business owners from what I've seen, choose cars like that because it makes them appear more humble (usually because they are) while they still get to enjoy a nice vehicle.
When you drive a prestigious car like a BMW or Mercedes Benz, you are announcing something about yourself to the world. One of those things is that you have lots of money, whether that is true or not as lots of people can have any number of things leased/financed that they can't
really afford. Anyway, that rubs many people the wrong way. For instance, if you have friends or family members that are struggling in this tough economy just to take a modest vacation or to make payments on their base model Honda Civic, seeing somebody roll around in a $50,000 vehicle can be off putting. People appreciate humility, and I think many people view young people anyway driving prestigious cars to show a lack of humility.
I think this changes quite a bit as a person ages or if somebody earned the wealth they have and buys these cars in middle age. My dream car is an M3, but I think my next "fun" car will be a Nissan 370z simply because I don't want to make my peers that may not have as much money as me feel down because of my conspicuous consumption. With the basic brands like Nissan, Toyota, Honda, domestics, etc. people tend not to mind. Humility to me shows strength of character, and ownership of these luxury brands really flies in the face of that.
Here is an article on humility that I love. It's called
Humility - The Most Beautiful Word in the English Language.
Anyway, I don't think you're a bad person if you own a BMW and I will probably own one (again) one day, but for now they conflict with who I want to be because I see the negative affect they have on a lot of people with less and that bothers me. Of course the other side of the coin is to not worry about what other people think because no matter what you do somebody is always going to have a problem with it.
